Amos Yong: Beyond the Impasse

 

Amos Yong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 192 pages, ISBN 9780801026126.

The goal of this thorough and erudite book by Amos Yong is explicit in the title, Beyond the Impasse, the impasse in question being the Christological question that throws up immediate blockades to inter-faith dialogue among the world’s varied religious traditions. Yong notes the reality that every attempt by Christians of any stripe over the years to engage in dialogue with representatives of other religions runs almost immediately headlong into the Christian conviction of the finality of Jesus Christ for revelation and salvation. The book is far too comprehensive and conceptually rich to visit every facet of the argument in a short review. Thus, I will briefly comment on a few elements of Yong’s method for approaching theology of religions.

Yong’s proposed solution for advancing “beyond the impasse” is taking a pneumatological approach to theology of religions, or, approaching the matter from the perspective of the Holy Spirit rather than the usual Christological center. As a Pentecostal evangelical, Yong knows that involving himself in theology of religions and inter-faith dialogue at all places him very small company within the evangelical world, and taking the particular approach advanced in this book ups the ante on the controversy front. He proceeds by reaffirming his evangelical and Pentecostal pedigree and allegiances (p. 32) in the introductory chapter. His thoroughly evangelical Christian perspective is buttressed by the explicitly Trinitarian approach taken in developing the pneumatological theology of religions (pp. 42-44). Herein lays, in my opinion, one of the great achievements of this book. The Trinitarian perspective is unflinchingly Christian while enabling us to approach theology of religions from the ancient metaphor of the Logos (Word) and Pneuma (Spirit) as the “two hands of the Father,” a concept derived from Irenaeus in the second century (p. 43). This concept understands all of reality as infused with both static or concrete (Word) and dynamic (Spirit) qualities. This understanding allows Yong to develop three axioms that allow for the universal presence of God through the Spirit, including presence in the world’s religions (pp. 44-46). Simply put, up to now the conversation has stalled over the particularity of Jesus Christ the Word, but this is insufficient from a Trinitarian perspective, because we then exclude the Spirit, the dynamic “hand” of the Father. To be thoroughly Trinitarian is to refuse to subordinate the Spirit to the Son, but to recognize that the two are coequal. This is, after all, orthodox Christian thinking. Therefore, dualisms between the particularity of Christ and the universality of the Spirit are overcome (p. 47), and the conversation can move forward.

Yong is sensitive to the postmodern critique of foundationalism, the Enlightenment idea that there are universal foundations of knowledge recognized by everyone. Thus he proposes a “foundational pneumatology” fired by the “pneumatological imagination a way of seeing God, self, and world that is inspired by the (Christian) experience of the Spirit.” And, since Spirit is the dynamic pole of the Word/Spirit complex, this means that the foundation must be a “shifting foundation” (pp. 63-65). This means that Scripture and experience, thought and practice are mutually informing. “I suggest, on the one hand, that a theology of the Holy Spirit emerges out of Christian experience of God’s presence and activity in the world, even while, on the other hand, it enables us to experience that presence and activity in more precise, intense, and true ways” (p. 65). The flexibility that results from this dynamic Spirit-based approach enables the evangelical to navigate between exclusivism, the idea that only Christianity contains the truth and none of the unevangelized will “make heaven” on the one hand, and pluralism, the idea that all religions are legitimate self-contained paths to salvation, on the other. The resulting “middle ground” is inclusivism, the view that allows for the presence, great or small, of God in other religious traditions while stopping short of affirming that these other traditions mediate salvation. This opens the conversation with other religions and raises the question of how to discern the Spirit of God in these other faiths.

Yong devotes chapter 6 (pp. 129-166) to developing a starting point for developing criteria for discernment. While not dismissing the charismatic gift of discernment of spirits, Yong asserts that the question of discernment is more than this, it is a “hermeneutics of life,” an interpretive grid for approaching lived reality. We start with what we see and, after having understood the perspectives of the representatives of other faiths on their own terms (chapter 7), we evaluate them based upon the shifting foundation or our pneumatological imagination. This at least provides us with a way “beyond the impasse” to ask further questions about the possibility of God’s presence in other faiths rather than just consigning all of their adherents to eternity without Christ right out of the gate.

Again, this book is far too rich in carefully argued and detailed points to have done it justice in such a short review, and I encourage all who are stout of heart and, if they lack a theological vocabulary, are not afraid to use a theological dictionary to delve into this landmark study of a Pentecostal/evangelical approach to theology of religions. It is well-worth the effort and may get the reader beyond his/her own impasses regarding the ever more frequent question of the degree of validity of other religions.

Reviewed by Matthew K. Thompson